Legion – Vengeance Demon Hunter – Full Tanking Guide 7.2 [Basics]

-GB Hey guys and today lets talk about the Vengeance Demon Hunter, playing this spec you can expect to have a fantastic mobility, the best amongst all other tanks. A great mitigation between self-healing, physical damage reduction, magic damage reduction and even absorbs that can soak up some pretty good damage if done correctly. All of that together makes up for a pretty good mitigation overall against any sorts of damage.

Along with a pretty good aoe and single target damage. A very versatile tank indeed. That said on this guide we are not going to talk about tanking on itself but yes on how the vengeance spec works and what you can do with it. So i’m taking liberty that you already know the absolute basics that is the role of tanking.such aggro,mitigation and etcera…okay? Now, I want to start explaining your abilities,talents and what you should be doing but before that, your artifact traits and I’m going to go in a more in depth explanation on them during the actual gameplay rotation part so everything is cohesive and i’m not just repeating myself and to just get them out of the way now, but , if you still building up your traits you have in the background the path you should be taking, your new traits on the other hand, don’t really change up to much is just improvements to your current abilities and you want to get them as fast as you can, then after, take this order of traits once you acquired all the 4 new ones, also in the background.

On your talents, there really isn’t a perfect build that you want to use all the time, the question you need to ask yourself is, what content am I going to be running: Is it a dungeon? Is it a raid? Do I have a easy time with this specific dungeon and I can go on a more offensive route, do I want more aoe or extra defenses? If i’m raiding, am I going to need the extra protection against magic damage or in need of more aoe abilities if there’s a lot of add’s? Am I progressing through some tough raid boss and im going to take advantage of my Last Resort talent, basically giving me a extra life.

Or I just want to have a good balance of all those things. This is most of the questions you should put to yourself when choosing your talents, so to optimize your tanking and just be a good Vengeance Demon Hunter and obviously to have some good fun, you are looking at changing your talents quite frequently. To make it as simple as I can, I’m going to talk about the the class in general and abilities then your talent combo’s you should be using in Dungeons, Raids and other specific encounters ,then you make your own conclusion of when you should be using them.As it can vary depending on your character gear, your own skill level or just your own personal fun. So how do you abilities work, how do they combo with each other, when is the best time to use one and very importantly, why, then go over your talents when we can properly, understand the reasoning behind those choices and what they will do. Okay? So your core gameplay, your main focus in Vengeance is building up your 2 resources, Pain and Soul Fragments so you can, mitigate your damage taken.

For that we have three very important abilities, Shear, Soul Cleave and Demon Spikes. Now, the way your mitigation works is through healing that soul cleave provides along with the soul fragments and just soaking up or reducing damage with Demon Spike. So with your Shear ability you can start building up pain and potentially some Soul Fragments, Shear is your main ability that you going to always spam, now you want to waste that pain to heal or prevent yourself from taking to much damage, so your Soul Cleave.

It costs 30 to 60 pain, the more pain used, the more it heals, so optimally you always want to use soul cleave with at least 60 pain before using it, unless you really don’t need the heals and just want the damage, plus it consumes all nearby soul fragments, to a max of 5, each soul fragments heals you for small percentage if you pass through them but instead of just running around to grab them, soul cleave absorbs them all immediately, and with the trait Erupting Soul’s, it also increases its damage per soul fragment. Now, you always want to build as much soul fragments as you possibly can, for a variety of reasons, more healing, more damage due to trait as said before but you also have 2 other traits, Fueled By Pain that has a chance to turn you into Meta per soul fragment consumed, boosting your armor, health and pain generation, the other is PainBringer reducing your damage taken by 3% for 4 seconds per soul fragment.

Meaning you always want at least 3 to 5 Fragments, before using soul cleave to get the most of it and the buffs,higher chance for the meta, for the damage, for the healing and for the damage reduction.All those things combined will lead to a much better mitigation. That said, that would be in a perfect world, but that’s not always the case, sometimes you generate to much pain or you take too much damage, well first thing is to not panic. One of the basic rules is not never let your resources overcap, if you reaching close to cap or already capped,don’t let it just sit around, waste all of that pain and generate it back in-case you need it, if not, just use it again for the damage. Now, using your soul cleave below 60 pain is really not going to do much unless you have at least 5 fragments lying around for the other buffs to come into play. The difference between the 30 pain heal to 60 heal is quite large.So again don’t panic, build up your pain and soul fragments then use Soul Cleave, another basic rule is to always check, do I have enough pain? do I have a good amount of Soul Fragments? And then Do I need the heal? If so, use it, if I don’t, save it and use it when at max pain or whenever is needed.

* Preferably you want to use it when below 80 to 70 percent HP, depending on the situation that you going to have to analyse by yourself. Now. Even though using Soul Cleave with soul fragments is good, its not a must, if you in danger using a solo Soul Cleave with 60 pain will still be good, dont deprive yourself from not using it just because you have no fragments. But you do have Soul Carver and may also have Fracture to build fragments on demand but more on that in a bit. okay? Overall, Managing those 2 resources will be the first step into being a good tank in the vengeance spec. The other reason not to panic is Demon Spikes, it’s your main active mitigation ability, on top of your healing, Its off your GCD so gives you more leeway to use it, it has 2 charges and lasts for 6 seconds reducing your physical damage taken, increased by mastery, and your parry chance by 20% and you want to use it to fill the ‘gaps’ ,if you will, during your building up of pain and soul fragments phase, or just when there’s a lot of physical damage going on, or to prevent portion of an incoming damage.

Such as those castable abilities from most dungeon bosses. So basically meaning, you want to always keep it active as much as you can but always have one charge ready for emergencies or specific abilities, or simply whenever you see that you are taking way too much physical damage or that you can prevent it by predicting it so it gives you an easier time to build pain and fragments so you can self-heal after, keeping up a smooth mitigation. Along with that you also have Empower Wards which simply reduces magic damage taken, pretty straightforward, use it whenever necessary, and Fiery Brand, now it works as both a damage ability and reduction ability. As it does fire damage over time and increases all fire damage taken to that target due to your traits and remember that your other trait, Charred Warblades trait, you heal 15% of the fire damage done, so you going to get small DoT healing per say, plus the target branded will deal 40% less damage to you, and you really want to save it to soak up some big damage or as a emergency cooldown.

Working best on bosses due to its single target component. On top of that you have your Flaming Soul trait that will increase the duration of Fiery Brand by seconds when Soul Carver and Immolation Aura does damage, so remember to have those abilities ready to be used in combo. Your Artifact ability on the other hand is more of preparation type, it does fire damage so again it will heal you for 15% damage it does, plus gives 2 soul fragments and another 3 over the course of 3 seconds. So, the way you want to use it, is in preparation for a powerful soul cleave heal, meaning you can use it in multiple scenarios, 1) is knowing that some big damage is coming up, and you want to get the maximum amount of healing that you can, so knowing that, you can use it beforehand, and be prepared for the damage and then you recover with big chunk of you HP right away. 2) the other way is… let’s say you had 4 fragments and you just used on a soul cleave, but that wasn’t enough to keep you up with the amount of damage you taking, so after that soul cleave, you use soul carver, getting all of those fragments, then shear to build up pain, while it ticks,, then soul cleave again with 5 fragments for some really good healing.

Essentially this ability, giving you more powerful heals in a short amount of time if used correctly. Best tip I can give is, think ahead before using your Soul Carver ability, try to know what’s going to happen in the fight and what you going to need and act accordingly. Also remember that your fragments cap at fight, they don’t get underused but still is something that you should try and avoid. Now, your big dick cooldown, Metamorphosis, you want to save it for very specific situations, during most fights you going to get the 6 second version one which works all the same, 100% more armor, 30% more HP and pain generation passively, that can lead to more Soul Cleaves and Demon Spikes. Save it for moments where all of your abilities and your heals and healers are having a hard time keeping up and you in a risk of dying, seriously helping your survivability. With of all the said, you still have your aoe and utility based abilities.And your aoe in Vengeance needs to be well managed just like your resources, because you don’t have specific aoe ability that you can spam. So is something to be careful on.

Basically meaning you have three abilities to manage well, Infernal Strike, Immolation Aura and Sigil of Flame. Infernal strike is both your movement and aoe ability in a small area, but you will fit it in your rotation for that extra damage, and is the ability you probably going to use to initially pull and grab aggro, then you have your immolation aura, doing damage all around your character and generating pain, so basically your ‘aggro holder’ for multiple enemies or to simply grab a pack of mobs to you as you walk across, then you have your sigil of flame being in a longer cooldown is mostly used as damage booster, but you can do alot with it, such as pulling in a big area from a distance and predict where adds will appear to immediately place the sigil and grabbing them. Now the reason you want to manage those abilities well is that all of them have cooldowns, you do have 2 charges out of infernal strike but if you use those abilities without thinking, there might be moments where a extra pack is pulled or just mobs and you have nothing to grab them except your single target abilities, leading to very awkward moments….

To prevent that from happening you always want to have one of those abilities ready to be used at all times. Especially a charge of Infernal Strike or Sigil of Flame as immolation aura you want to keep active as much as you can for the pain it gives off. But remember that your Throw Glaive for example also hits 3 targets so might come in handy in certain packs, the same follows for soul cleave, as the name says it, it cleaves all nearby targets for some good damage but can also, sometimes work to grab that extra pack of mobs that just entered the fray and all of your other abilities are on cooldown. Remember that fire damage heals you so, all of those abilities aoe abilities said, will heal you for that 15% of the damage done as they are all fire based. So you want to use them even in single target.

Plus the pain from immolation Aura. That said you have 2 other sigils that you want to make the most out of, Sigil of Misery and Sigil of Silence, adding an aoe fear and silence, a big part of your job as a tank is mob control, and those 2 abilities do improve it by great margin in certain situations, Theres a lot of casters, just use sigil of silence and then you can put all enemies together for cleave and aoe and of course prevent those abilities from going off, the same thing follows for Sigil of Misery, the fear it gives off can be useful even if those mobs are in combat, as it will interrupt casts or abilities for that less than a second fear.

Once again, adding more mob control. That covers about everything, now that your spec is nicely understood of what all your abilities do and when and how they should be used we can move onto to your talents and then just a quick re-cap on your… ‘rotation’… if you will. ———————— So your talents, again all of them are perfectly viable, except for blade turning, due to its unpredictability but lets ask some basic questions: if going to do a dungeon or a mythic plus, what should I choose to improve my experience.I don’t feel comfortable yet to go to more offensive route so I want a good balance of everything. Okay so, on tier one you have Agonizing Flames or Abyssal Strike both will do you great in dungeon content and will depend on your own personal choice, do you want more frequent and further ranged Infernal Strikes for more aoe damage and consistent and faster pulls? Or do you feel what you have is enough and prefer to have the improved Immolation Aura doing 30% more damage and giving you some mobility.

And in turn extra healing as once again, fire damage heals you. I personally prefer Abyssal Strike, but thats on you. On tier 2 Fallout will fair you better for a more balanced playstyle, as the Immolation Aura initial damage hit has a chance spawn soul fragments per target hit, as we talked before, more soul fragments equals more healing and all those juicy buffs. In dungeons you going to take the most advantage out of this talent as you going to always hit multiple enemies in trash packs.

Next tier is Flame Crash, will provide you the most usefulness in dungeon content, as every time you jump with infernal strike, where you land is going to create a sigil of flame, increasing your damage, in turn agroo and healing, along with grabbing mobs that werent damaged by the jump itself but were nearby. It combines really well with the tier 1 talent Abyssal strike for more frequent uses. Then is Fracture, Soul Rending can be good but currently you really not going to take that much out of it, Fracture on the hand, mixes another ability into your roster costing 20 pain. The best way to use it, is in a similar way to Soul Carver, used in preparation but it costs pain, meaning when you have extra pain that you can spend and you really not needing the soul cleave for heals you can just spam Fracture. Getting more fragments in the process and damage, but obviously you can use in preparation for some big damage that might come up, getting those 5 soul fragments much more easier for a powerful soul cleave or soul barrier more on that in a bit.

Especially when the RNG gods are failing you with your shears and you have Soul Carver on cooldown. Just be careful on wasting to much pain and then needing a soul cleave quickly and having none. This way, you going to get a lot more fragments making Fracture your go to talent for practically every situation. After, is on you, I personally prefer quickened sigils for faster cooldowns and activation, it combines well with flame crash and when you needing to use Sigil of Flame to pull that extra pack of mobs that was just pulled, this way it activates faster so there isn’t that fear that the activation time might miss, Concentrated Sigil does improve your sigil of flame duration which again combines well with flame crash but it removes the ability to place them, in turn removing the potential to use it as a pulling ability.

As for Sigil of Chains is like the outcast sibling of Gorefiend’s Grasp, does about the same but is just worst as you are very limited on its area of use. But can work fine sometimes.Once again, pick whatever you feel that you need. Then Fel Devastation, provides solid dps gain and pretty good burst healing, so you would want to use it whenever you needing that emergency healing, remember that combining with Fiery Brand, which due to the trait increases fire damage, will increase its healing potential. Then Finally Soul Barrier, which is pretty interesting talent, combining perfectly with Fracture and Fallout and changing a little bit your ability thinking.

The way it works is similar to Soul Cleave, but instead of damage and heal you get a shield, its power depending on the soul fragments you absorbed, now in those 12 seconds the shield can never disappear but as you take damage it grows weaker but it can be ‘re-powered’ . Meaning to use Soul Barrier you need to have some preparation beforehand, between soul carvers and fractures. You want to have at least 5 fragments first , then during those 12 seconds you want to quickly build fragments again to ‘re-power it’ as it takes damage,and continue to absorb said damage, to do this easily, you want to have Soul Carver ready to build them, then building pain if necessary, then when around half of its duration or whenever the shield is at its minimum, absorb the fragment with soul cleave to give it’s ‘power back’. Preferably Soul Barrier works best against magic damage but can also prevent a lot of physical damage to little cost.

All around, this build has a bit of everything, survivability, better aoe, damage and mobility. But now lets assume that you are going on a offensive route and you want to do more damage or the complete opposite you looking for extra survivability and very little dps gain. For the damage based one, on the first tier, same rules as previously apply, or if you feeling fancy, Razor Spikes can be good if you can combine abilities such as Soul Cleave and Fracture for the 20% damage boost on physical abilities. Saving up the pain to then use demon spikes and just wasting all of that pain on fracture, during those 6 seconds, getting some pretty good damage. on tier 2 Burning Alive can provide a big dps increase for the aoe with Fiery Brand that spread every 2 seconds to nearby targets, but can only spread one at the time, then you can combine it with other fire abilities for the damage boost it gives off.

But fallout will still be good due to a later talent choice. Next tier Flame Crash will still be good but Fel eruption will provide a big dps increase especially for single-target. Then Fracture will still be your go to. Now here you have Spirit Bomb, which is a very interesting talent, it uses a soul fragment to aoe all nearby targets and applying a dot healing you for 20% of all the damage done to those targets, meaning, it gives off a big dps increase in aoe such as in a dungeon but will remove a big portion of your mitigation as you going to have to waste those fragments for damage instead of healing yourself, the 20% helps but isn’t as good, this is why you only should take it if you feel confident that you can trade that for damage.

It combines really well with fallout for that immediate soul fragments at the start of the fight when you use immolation. And you essentially just use your soul fragments to do damage whenever you have them and mixing shears,soul cleaves and fractures plus demon spikes for the physical damage boost with razor spikes if you so happen to take it. Remember that spirit bomb does do fire damage that combines well with fiery brand with the Burning Alive Talent. Lastly Demonic Infusion, at first its a defensive talent, and it is but it gives off 60 pain which equals more abilities used which equals = more damage, plus the demon spike refresh works great with Razor Spikes. Now for the defensive style build everything stays as previously from the more balanced build, the differences are the extra focus on Demon Spikes and pain generation for extra soul cleaves, such as taking Felblade, fitting easily in fights for that extra pain, Feed the Demon for the cooldown reduction of Demon Spikes on the consumption of soul fragments and Demonic Infusion for the extra Demon Spikes and 60 pain that can give you a free Soul Cleave and more damage mitigated through said Demon Spikes.

Although that really only works if its a physical intensive fight, if you going to face magical enemies and you want more defense, soul barriers with fracture will be best. As for raiding you probably want to focus more on single target, taking exception in some fights. So on first tier, either talent will work as we went through previously, pick whatever will work best for you, even razor spikes, on tier 2, Feast on the Soul will provide the best healing, the other 2 only really work for multiple targets, so useless in a lot of boss fights but if there’s aoe, consider taking one of them instead. Next Felblade will work best for single-target but you can still take Flame Crash for the dps increase, especially if there’s aoe. And you really not needing the extra pain Felblade gives off. Just to edit something in that I forgot, currently the tier 20 set bonus, from Tomb of Sargeras is giving a big boost to sigil of flame, adding a 5% damage reduction and 2k versatility, while its active, making taking Flame Crash with Abyssal Strike a very powerful choice to take for every situation with said tier set.

As then you can maintain sigil of flame active almost constantly. But that said, that may change in the future.* After is Fracture, then concentrated sigils will work best for bosses where placing sigils in other areas are not needed, and can just click it and immediately pop, if you need to use them in other location, take quickened sigil. Fel Devastation for the burst healing and then finally, last tier, will depend on the fight, Soul Barrier will work best for magic damage, where Demon Spikes are going to be worthless, Demonic Infusion for high physical intensive fights or Last Resort if progressing or in fear of dying to a certain mechanic.

That about covers it all, remember there’s tons of choices you can make it, you can mix up alot of talents even other options that I didn’t said here for the sake of time but I covered the main ones. And explained all the talents and abilities is up to you now when to use them. As a summary to everything, learn to manage your Pain and Soul Fragments well, that is your first step, knowing when to properly use Soul Cleaves or Soul Barriers if with the talent, along with abilities like Soul Carver and Fracture as said previously. Build pain and soul fragments and waste that pain and soul fragments, accordingly to what’s going on and what’s going to happen in that certain fight. Use demon spikes as much as possible against physical hitting enemies but have one charge always ready if in need. You never want to be in a position where you taking too much damage and you have no pain or mitigation abilities to use, if you manage well, that will never happen.

As for aoe, remember to quickly grab aggro with Infernal Strike and then Immolation Aura but like Demon Spikes, try to always have, either a charge of Infernal Strike or a Sigil of Flame in case of a next enemy pack is pulled as you lack on demand aoe..Also remember that you have other useful sigils and even Throw Glaive if in need. Keep always in mind that fire based abilities heals you, so remember to use it as much as you can but not overruling previous rules, use sigil of flame and immolation even for single target. Immolation Aura also gives you pain, so you want it active as much as you can. And combine fire based abilities, especially powerful ones like Fel Devastation with fiery brand for the damage and in turn healing boost. And increasing Fiery Brand duration with soul carver and immolation aura, have them off cooldown before using it for the trait, unless if in danger and need it quickly.Okay? So stats, will depend on what build and what you focusing, survivability or just a good balance.

My advice overall is, if you are a player that does both raiding and dungeons,, focus on mastery and versatility then haste and crit, if raiding and having trouble, try to stack more of that versatility for the extra survivability. Mastery stacks up well with demon spikes but remember that demon spikes is worthless for magic based enemies so, in a lot of situations is a waste of a stat, hence versatility sometimes may outweigh it, especially i Nighthold where there’s a lot of magic damage. As for gems, just stack up Mastery or Versatility, depending on what you needing, the same goes for enchants, neck enchant though should be mark of the heavy hide.

And that about covers it all, as always thank you for watching, if you have any questions regarding the vengeance demon hunter feel free to leave it down below, subscribe and like for more guides, have fun guys…cya.